The start of the school year did not take place at Spiders. On Monday, September 2nd in the morning, barely ten meters from a crowded Parisian ring road, the forecourt of the offices of this French video game studio, creator of the titles GreedFall et Steelrisingwas busy by several dozen people responding to a call for a strike. Employees denounced a deterioration in their working conditions and strained relations with their management.
Not far from there, in the 20e arrondissement of Paris, workers from another French studio, Kylotonn, also initiated a strike movement on Monday. This synchronized walkout is intended “in support of their Spiders colleagues”, explains the Union of Video Game Workers (STJV) in a press release. The opportunity to deplore “similar issues. Among others: recruitment, turnover, constant lack of information on the future of the company and productions…”
A solidarity movement that also has to do with the fact that Spiders and Kylotonn studios belong to the same company, the French Nacon, a subsidiary of Bigben Interactive. And while they both have to release highly anticipated productions — GreedFall II : The Dying World for Spiders, September 24, and Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown for Kylotonn, on September 12 — their strike comes in the context of a global economic crisis in the video game sector.
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A long list of grievances at Spiders
From their picket line, where two chairs and a camping table with pastries and coffee were set up, the Spiders strikers — around fifteen employees in total — did not say that they were primarily worried about their jobs, even though the industry has been heavily laying off workers in recent months (more than 11,500 jobs worldwide in 2024, according to the Game Industry Layoffs website). However, they do regret various internal problems that, in the long term, they believe threaten the balance of their studio and could have “a consequence on the quality of the games”explains to the Monde Nicolas. Programmer and union representative of the company, he does not wish, like the other Spiders employees to whom The World has spoken, that his name be made public.
On August 27, a vast list of grievances (“growing instability”, “generalized disorganization”, “turnover and recruitment problems”, “glaring lack of transparency”, “denial of problems”…) had been detailed in a twenty-page letter signed, according to the action committee bringing together studio employees, by 43 of the 95 Spiders employees, and relayed by the STJV. “The false and even defamatory accusations made by the STJV in no way reflect the reality of the daily work of the company’s employees and constitute an attack on the studio’s reputation”the management then reacted in a press release.
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